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Dear list members,
Our next seminar will be at 6:00-7:30pm on Thursday April
19 in Lecture Theater S325 of the John Woolley Building,
University of Sydney.
We hope you can attend.
Kind regards,
AABS Executive
Healing with Gods, Mantras and Medicine in Contemporary
Bhutan
This seminar focuses upon ritual healers in present-day eastern Bhutan,
and their legitimation, authority and agency. They are discussed against
the background of diverse forms of institutionalized and popular
Buddhism. Their healing powers are connected with gods, mantras and/or
medicinal herbs, while their knowledge is either transmitted via lineages
of teachers, received in visions or during states of possession, and
legitimized by peer acknowledgement. Questions will be posed on how best
to define and understand ritual healers and their popularity within their
local contexts and communities vis-a-vis the modern state. The case study
of a female spirit-medium and her healing practices will be presented to
exemplify the hybridity of local healing cosmologies. Similar to most
ritual healers, her ambivalent status falls outside of both government
supported, institutionalized Buddhism, as well as notions of public
health (including our own disciplinary boundaries), and defies the category
of a ‘shamanic’ healer as well. The lecture is illustrated by a short
film and photographs.
Mona Schrempf is a social and
medical anthropologist with an MA and a PhD in social anthropology (Free
University Berlin). Her research topics concern health, medicine,
science, religion and healing among Tibetan and Himalayan communities.
Publications include Women
as Visionaries, Healers and Agents of Social Transformation in the
Himalayas, Tibet, and Mongolia (Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines 2015); Efficacy and Safety in Tibetan
and Chinese Medicine (Asian
Medicine – Tradition and Modernity 2015, ed. with L.
Springer); Medicine
between Science and Religion (2011, ed. with V. Adams a. S.
Craig); Studies of
Medical Pluralism in Tibetan History and Society (2010, ed.
with S. Craig, M. Cuomu and F. Garrett) and Soundings in Tibetan Medicine (Brill
2007, ed.).
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